madmen

The 1960’s: Women flex their marketing muscles

Where the 1950’s explored demographics, the 1960s saw marketers turn to “psychographics”—the study of how personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles come together to influence buying behavior. In doing so, agencies unleashed their creativity to produce more engaging, memorable, and influential ads. The Silicon Valley’s very own Stanford Research Institute led the way with its Values and Lifestyles program.

And in this environment of expansion and experimentation, women began to be considered for other than secretarial jobs. In the hit TV series “Mad Men,” copywriter Peggy Olson symbolizes the rise of feminism in marketing. Her character’s dedication to excellence in writing is still relevant to marketing almost 60 years later, given today’s emphasis on content marketing.